NTT DATA Business Solutions A/S manages its human resources and financial operations from a single cloud platform with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. By leveraging a common data model to power end-to-end processes, NTT DATA Business Solutions is improving business performance while reducing risk, complexity, and costs.
Germany-based NTT DATA Business Solutions helps companies transform, grow, and succeed with SAP solutions. Part of the NTT DATA Group and a global strategic partner of SAP, the company recently received the SAP MEE Award for Partner Excellence 2024 for Cloud Performance, as well as the SAP Partner Award for Customer Success Management and Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization.
Critical to the company’s success is a workplace culture built around developing the skills and capabilities of its 15,000 employees. Enabling its talent strategy to create value for customers motivated the decision to move to the cloud by implementing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
“It’s all about having the right talent with the right skills and the right capabilities,” says Marianne Mia Jensen, senior director and regional head of operations for North and Eastern Europe at NTT DATA Business Solutions. “Our employees are our most valuable asset, and we need to make sure they have the right skills and the right capabilities to deliver maximum value to our clients.”
Modernizing for a future of skills and innovation
Founded in 1989 as S&P Consult, NTT DATA Business Solutions was one of the first SAP partners and then expanded rapidly through both organic growth and acquisitions. Over time, the organization accumulated a large amount of legacy technology, creating information silos that hindered business processes for staffing client projects.
Lacking visibility into global HR processes and data, the company needed to modernize with digital technologies to centralize and harmonize processes while maintaining a lean management structure to support the business. To set an example for its customers, the company also wanted a robust and flexible platform that could accommodate future innovations and technologies.
NTT DATA Business Solutions chose SAP as its technology partner for its cloud adoption. In October 2019, just before the pandemic, the company deployed SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for its global workforce. When the pandemic began in 2020, NTT DATA Business Solutions was well-positioned to manage its workforce through the crisis. Jensen recalls: “This deployment, along with several other apps, gave us a great foundation to build on.” [during the pandemic] Because we were very digital.”
NTT DATA Business Solutions has selected SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to modernize its ERP and plans to launch the solution in the Nordic countries in April 2023.
Jensen summarises how technology supports the business strategy, pointing to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP SuccessFactors HCM, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and SAP Concur solutions: “This is the foundation for finding the right talent,” he says. “We also look at market trends. What are the needs of tomorrow? We map the skills gaps, but also consider what our consultants’ preferences are when it comes to professional and personal development and growth. SAP SuccessFactors is key for us.”
Using data to find the right talent for the job
Now, when a request comes in to staff a project, NTT DATA Business Solutions has a data-driven process in place to find the right people with the right skills and availability to staff the client’s project. The process starts by analyzing data from NTT DATA’s own resource management app, built on SAP BTP, to identify consultant availability and a skills database from SAP SuccessFactors solutions. Projects are set up in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
Once the actual work begins, consultants log their time in the SAP BTP time registration app and record expenses in the SAP Concur solution. Financial processes run in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, with data synchronization facilitated by SAP’s common data model. As a final step, reporting runs in SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Analytics Cloud.
The power of a common data model
These two SAP solutions – SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition – leverage a common data model, providing a strong foundation for increased efficiency and business agility, which in turn helps organizations benefit from streamlined HR processes, end-to-end integration with seamless connectivity between HR and finance functions for accurate and up-to-date employee data across the organization, increased data transparency for analysis and reporting on workforce trends, costs, and profitability for better strategic planning and resource allocation, and compliance with regulatory requirements and data security.
Seamlessly synchronizing data with a common data model for SAP business applications reduces the need for manual data entry and redundant processes. For example, employee data managed in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central is available in real time in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, and master data such as cost center data flows seamlessly from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. Eliminating data silos ensures HR and finance teams are working with consistent, accurate data for critical employment decisions and legal reporting obligations.
Visibility drives talent strategies and client projects
With SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, NTT DATA Business Solutions benefits from having a single source of truth. [visible to us] “We can manage all of our processes from SAP SuccessFactors through to invoicing, which gives us great visibility into everything that’s going on within the system,” says Jensen.
We now have global HR processes in place, visibility into the different skills and competencies within our organization, regardless of where employees work – finance, supply chain, sales, etc. Additionally, new financial models for activity-based revenue recognition provide detailed financial information on projects and customer engagements.
Each update release of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, delivered semi-annually in the cloud, brings the latest innovations to the organization. Reflecting on NTT DATA’s journey to the cloud, Jensen says the key to integrating innovation is to focus on process, not technology.
“There’s a lot of technology and systems that need to be set up, but it’s about focusing on the process you’re implementing, focusing on the data, and understanding how it works with your new processes using the new systems. And finally, change management is crucial.”
She adds: “We need to understand how to leverage new technologies, not just for today, but for the future.”
